Sylvia Rivera, born on July 2 in 1951, was a Latina American queer rights activist, member of the Gay Liberation Front, and community worker from the state of New York.
Rivera, who identified as a "half-sister", participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front. With her close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a socialist group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.
At different times in her life, Rivera battled substance abuse and lived on the streets, largely in the gay homeless community at the Christopher Street docks. Her experiences made her more focused on advocacy for those who, in her view, mainstream society and the assimilationist factions of the LGBT community were leaving behind.
Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19th, 2002, at St. Vincent's Hospital, of complications from liver cancer. Activist Riki Wilchins said this of her: "In many ways, Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall".
-
Remember the radicalism of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson
-
“Our armies are rising:” Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
- ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread
- ✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
I got very scared and then it was funny. Sitting at my computer desk I heard something that sounded weird. I moved over to were the tower is and at first I thought maybe components in my cable modem were melting. Then I bent down and then I wondered if the noise was a crackling fire with occasional popping sounds. My heart started beating. Fire! Is the outside wall on fire? What the fuck is happening!
It turns out it was auditory oddity. My screen door was open and I didn't know it had started to rain. The cracking sounds was simply the rain falling on the concrete outside and the echo/reverb really make it sound like a burning noise. The perfectly matched popping sounds must be larger amounts of water occasionally falling off tree branches in globs.
Sounds like when I had oxy after surgery. I heard what sounded like someone hitting something metal with a small hammer and I got up to look outside at what it was but it was just the bubbles popping in my can of soda.